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Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

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Re: Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

#151

Post by neogodless »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #121
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a cost to that though, the reality is Windows has become rather bloated because MS can't let anything go. It doesn't help that they have never been able to say no to anything and everything getting included.

That said, they are moving in a direction; they've stopped trying to make IE work in favor of a rewrite, keeping IE around for older apps. Honestly wouldn't be surprised - actually I AM surprised this isn't a thing yet - that they would run older Windows apps in a VM / emulator. Actually they may already do this but I'm just not aware of it. One thing they have been doing is turn Windows into an evergreen operating s…

In Windows 7, they had "XP Mode" which was just a VM for running Windows XP. (I do not recall if it was available in Vista - they did not include it in Windows 10.)

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=800...

> It uses virtualization technology such as Windows Virtual PC to provide a Virtual Windows XP environment for Windows 7.

Re: Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

#152

Post by rsynnott »

spijdar wrote: post #22

> However, that marginal improvement hardly seems worth upsetting the entire Mac OS developer and consumer software ecosystem. Really? This entire article is really dismissive, but this line especially struck me. I'm not convinced the M1 chip is some strange alien tech bypassing the laws of physics, but it seems clearly superior at its specific niche (single processes with an emphasis on low power usage, using fewer…

> Architecturally it looks like they're sacrificing expandability and raw multiprocessing power (like massively parallel database server multiprocessing) for a single minded focus on laptop chips.

I don't see that there's any hard evidence they're doing that; there's no obvious reason that they can't just shove in more cores for an M1X or whatever (very much Intel's approach these days, say), and they're not (at least technologically) married to the on-package RAM thing.

Re: Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

#153

Post by hehetrthrthrjn »

my123 wrote: post #125
hehetrthrthrjn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes there is: the lack of third party graphics drivers. That single issue has the potential to nobble any useable ARM based Hackintosh, though someone might step forward and implement a graphics driver, but that's quite hard.

That issue is actually quite interesting. It's because if the GPU is reverse engineered enough, you can simulate an Apple GPU on another machine _and_ run other OSes with a proper GPU stack on those macs.

There's two parts to this issue: one is reverse engineering the Apple driver interface, the other is reverse engineering the third party target hardware interface.

Most vendors of graphics hardware keep their interface secret, but not all. The problem is that the set of hardware that isn't secret won't overlap much with what people have or want to run, which is pretty central to what makes Hackintoshes attractive.

Re: Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

#154

Post by josefresco »

socialdemocrat wrote: post #68

The truth is somewhere in the middle, so while this article has some good points it is too colored by a strong dislike for all things Apple and borderline conspiratorial thinking. I don’t think there is anything that suggests Apple is going to stop people from installing Apps outside their App Store. Rather it is about making sure it is easy for regular users to get Apps in a safe manner without malware and Trojan ho…

> I don’t think there is anything that suggests Apple is going to stop people from installing Apps outside their App Store. Rather it is about making sure it is easy for regular users to get Apps in a safe manner without malware and Trojan horses.

Sorry but I had to LOL (combined with grey-haired head shaking). I've been a "technologist" for over 25 years. Every time some corporate entity or government body adds similar "security" they trot out this same cliche line. "Oh no no no it's not so we can CONTROL you, is so we can PROTECT you". Yeah, sure buddy.

Re: Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

#155

Post by matwood »

nottorp wrote: post #96

Apple has been screwed by CPU manufacturers 3 times already, or do you think they changed architectures because they were having great fun doing that? In the past 3 years I've seen more and more people asking not for an Arm Mac, but for an AMD Mac. Because AMD is again cheaper and faster than Intel. But it appears Apple can now afford to build their own CPUs that are better and lower power than either AMD or Intel. N…

> In the past 3 years I've seen more and more people asking not for an Arm Mac, but for an AMD Mac

I've seen the opposite. The people asking for an AMD mac were always thinking of it as a stop gap. Ever since the iPhone/iPad A series chips started blowing the doors off of benchmarks, people have been clamoring for a mac with a higher tdp A series chip. Now that the M1 is out, we can see why.

Re: Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

#156

Post by bfgoodrich »

Tade0 wrote: post #132
vvwvvwvvw wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering why Gamer Nexus (a very rigorous YouTube review channel) didn't sent a M1 device, while those Apple fanboy channels got it. Probably the dude would've torn the M1 performance claims apart.

Because the GPU there is okay-ish, but not amazing - not really suitable for gaming.

The power-sipping, integrated GPU has performance 30% better than a GTX 1050 Ti [1].

The GTX 1050 Ti is still a current, sold product [2], selling for $150 or so USD [3], and consumes about 75-100W in your PC.

We can no true Scotsman this, but that GPU performance is a literal magnitude+ greater than what the majority of users have in their computers (and I am including full desktops in this discussion). The overwhelming majority of users are not paying $500-$1000 for a GPU (now add the 700W+ PSU, and what in effect becomes a space heater), which is the current going rate for the mythical gaming market.

Is it intended for enthusiast gamers who have giant $1000 graphics cards sucking 300W? No, of course not. There is no surprise that Apple didn't send it to a guy who targets that crowd. But for the vast majority of people that chip would represent a pretty significant upgrade over what they currently have.

[1] - Even in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, demonstrated purely given that it was running under Rosetta 2, it did quite decent.

[2] - Current products from EVGA, Gigabyte, ASUS and others feature the GTX 1050 Ti, making it a current product.

[3] - Which is a range, and above, that similar cards sell for. If you can time travel you may be able to get an equal performance level for less, but I lack time travel abilities.

Re: Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

#157

Post by coldtea »

sneak wrote: post #62
coldtea wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problems with this are more societal ones than technical or practical: It is impossible, for example, to install most popular apps for macOS without identifying yourself to Apple (and by extension the US government and military intelligence). For those kind of problems, I agree. But I think they should be solved in the political and legal level, not some technical fix. If you can't trust the government, if the…

> If you can't trust the government, if the government wants increasingly more data, the government should be curbed by protests, voting, and so on. The apps not talking to the vendor is just a band-aid. And what if you can't discuss protests or protest organization on any of the apps you are allowed to install on your device, as Apple has made the case already in Hong Kong? This all starts with the tools. Without to…

>And what if you can't discuss protests or protest organization on any of the apps you are allowed to install on your device, as Apple has made the case already in Hong Kong?

What about it? People had protests, and far more massive, at the era of Louis XVI or the Czar, or Pinochet, or whatever. Without IM apps and 10000 electronic alternatives, and with much worse repurcursions if caught...

>In Apple's jurisdiction, there are essentially zero options on the ballot for candidates that wish to roll back US state/military surveillance. Voting is not a useful or practical tool in this fight.

Sideloading isn't gonna help if that's the kind of problems you're facing...

Re: Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

#158

Post by masklinn »

hehetrthrthrjn wrote: post #82
my123 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Arm, maybe Hackintoshes that will be worth it (for VMs at least) will be possible in the future. If Windows 10 on Arm succeeds... to make that hardware widely available. SBCs do not count. (there's technically nothing preventing you of running macOS arm64 on non-Apple hardware in a VM)

Yes there is: the lack of third party graphics drivers. That single issue has the potential to nobble any useable ARM based Hackintosh, though someone might step forward and implement a graphics driver, but that's quite hard.

And while I have not seen anything on that subject (yet), a much deeper integration with their Secure Enclave is likely, and it’s very much possible they extended the ISA and take advantage if that internally.

Re: Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

#159

Post by rsynnott »

nottorp wrote: post #96

Apple has been screwed by CPU manufacturers 3 times already, or do you think they changed architectures because they were having great fun doing that? In the past 3 years I've seen more and more people asking not for an Arm Mac, but for an AMD Mac. Because AMD is again cheaper and faster than Intel. But it appears Apple can now afford to build their own CPUs that are better and lower power than either AMD or Intel. N…

> Apple has been screwed by CPU manufacturers 3 times already

Arguably 4. Motorola abandoned m68k (at least as a desktop route; variants lived on for a very, very long time as an embedded thing). Then Motorola largely abandoned PPC, leaving IBM as the only desktop-y manufacturer. Then, unsurprisingly, IBM fell behind with it. And now Intel.

Re: Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

#160

Post by masklinn »

sradman wrote: post #45

It is not ALL about platform control. ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture gives us full day battery browsing/video-playback using the efficient IceStorm cores as well as very competitive performance benchmark results using the FireStorm cores. Apple's System-on-a-Chip provides additional value-add (e.g. unified memory). Vertical integration of silicon does expand Apple’s walled garden but I’m not convinced this is the driv…

> Apple's System-on-a-Chip provides additional value-add (e.g. unified memory).

Both AMD and Intel support unified memory on their igp (and AMD at least is working on dGP unified memory).

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